


That Which I Become

by daisyfalls



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 12:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4607406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisyfalls/pseuds/daisyfalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't often Carmilla thought of death.  Not when she lived it.  But sometimes, even she can't escape it.</p><p>Set post episode 02x22.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which I Become

**Author's Note:**

> So this idea has been floating around my head for a while. And last Thursday's episode and subsequent tweets seemed to provide just the context for it. Angst ahoy, Maties.

The first time she thought of death was the night she was murdered.

It had been painfully ironic, she remembers thinking.How it had never occurred to her such a thing could happen.How ignorantly safe she had felt.Glittering and gliding.The cause of wealth.  

So simple and young.

So naive.

Her father, she remembers thinking.She should have listened to her father.  

How safe the lights had felt.How protective the swirl of a petticoat and dress.

How a simple offer at a dance had gone so wrong.

The offer of safety and a sweet smile.The warmth of a strong hand holding her own. Cradling her back.The chill of blue eyes.So mysterious and bright.  

It had been brief.Surprisingly so.She had barely had time to think.Just simply look at the stars and catch the sound of a long exhale against her neck.A satisfied smirk at the sound of her yielding flesh.At the gasp that came from her lips.

Her liver.She had later learned.He had pierced her liver.

She had never stood a chance.

How inviting it had felt.The chill and the dark.Warm.Her body dancing up and away from itself.  

Gliding into nothingness.

And she had stopped breathing.And the lights had gone.And the world had become dark.

And then there had been a hand.

Guiding.

And a whispered voice.

Loving.

And death she had escaped.

Living.  

_Life_.Unlike any she had ever felt before.

Pulsing through her veins with the sacrifice of the blood of another.

_Death_ …what a silly word it had become.  

And hers.

Hardly an inconvenience.

_“Did it hurt?_ ” Laura had asked _that_  night.

The solarium dark, though their bodies illuminated by the night and the stars.Crystal and bright.The frost that lined the windows chilling.  

Though the room had been warm.Hot and sticky.The scent of sex and want hanging in the air.

_“Did what hurt?”_ she had asked.Not really paying attention to the lazy circles Laura was drawing on her stomach.Not until it traced across the raise of skin she so often forgot was there.

And they both knew, Laura didn’t have to repeat her question.

_“No.”_

_“Really?”_

And she had shrugged.Trying to dodge the disbelief etched in Laura’s brow.In the tilt of her head.

_“It happened a long time ago.”_ The understatement of the century.“ _I don’t really think about it anymore._ ”

And then she had kissed her.  

And they didn’t do much talking after that.

 

//

 

The second time she thought of death was the night Maman had nailed the coffin shut.

Though, nailed, she knew, was a bit of an understatement.

Nailed and locked and glued and finished off with some sort of bought sorcery, no doubt.

She’d tried to set the wretched thing on fire after her pounding and clawing had proved fruitless.But nothing had worked.  

It was locked and she was trapped.

The result of selling one’s soul to something worse than the Devil.

And she had thought.What a pleasant way to go.To whither and die beneath the soil with nothing but a broken heart. 

Broken soul, really.

Though she supposed you can’t break what was already gone.

And then the blood had come.

Two weeks later, when she had felt the last of her breath lisping by.Hardly painful though.Just empty.Barely there.And she had welcomed it.Ready.The brush of Ell’s name on her tongue.Sweet and unsaid.

Ready to take that which had been denied her so long ago.

The blood had come.

Quick and rising.Full and filling until she was immersed.Clouding her vision with red.

She hadn’t been able to help the needy gulp she took.

And it came more.Filling and filling no matter how much she drank.  

Years had passed, she thinks.And she had grown bored.Bored of thinking of nothing but blonde hair and a sweet inviting dimple.Bored of drinking even when she didn’t feel the need.

And she had tried to starve herself.To fall into the pits of that which she had been denied.  

But her efforts were for naught.

The blood would fill.Fill and fill.

And she could not escape the tasty tang of red.The want and the need.

No matter how much she fought to end it.

Until bombs had come and set her free.

Maman’s powers useless against a silly human’s machine.

She had risen.Red and dripping.Covered in dirt.

A monster born of the Earth’s heartless belly.

And to the sad state of the world.No one had thought it strange or terrifying.

“ _Does it still bother you?”_ Laura had asked, as they curled beneath a log for warmth and comfort.

The Science Ginger had started a fire nearby.And they and Betty Crocker had snuggled up next to it.Curled together.While she and Laura had sought private refuge beneath a fallen tree.

“ _Laura, for the last time, the sweater is_ fine. _”_ She’d punctuated the last word.Because it wasn’t.But it was warm enough.Even if there had been a whole bin of them.But Laura had insisted she wear that one.  

Laura had snorted then and rolled her eyes.“ _No.The—_.” 

A pause.And suddenly Laura seemed shy and uncertain.

_“When I was ten I got trapped in an elevator._ ”She had started to ramble.“ _And for the longest time I couldn’t go in small enclosed spaces.I still kind of can’t.”_

She motioned around them.To the cramped confines of the log and ground.

“ _And I know you don’t really like talking about it.But I think about it a lot.I think about the stories you’ve told me a lot_.”

“ _I think the word you’re looking for is ‘too much’.”_

That had earned her a slap on the arm.

_“It’s just…You spent decades, Carm.Trapped in a box and I—-.”_

 Her sigh had cut Laura off.

“ _It happened a long time ago.”_ She had said.“ _I don’t really think about it anymore.”_

_“No?”_

_“No.”_

Laura had kissed her then.Full and hard.Breathing in to her, what she wasn’t really sure.But she had held on.Perhaps tighter than she had meant.

And then Ginger One and Ginger Two had ruined it with an ignorant question.

 

//

 

The third time she thought of death was the night she jumped into the pit.

Her body broken and bleeding, no doubt.Lying wedged beneath the earth.The pit dark around her.The hilt of the sword resting nimbly in her fingers.

Maman’s scream echoing off the rock walls long after she had perished.  

Stains of tears and blood lined her cheeks.She could feel the heavy salt weighing against her skin.

The vision of Ell, reaching and crying through the light.  

Haunting.  

In a way that had escaped her all those many years ago.

Relief.  

The breath of air that had been taken away.

Shackles she hadn’t known she had been wearing, coming free.

And this would be it.  

Peace to finally settle.Her chest light and empty.  

Saving a girl.So brave and idiotic.As she was too.  

To give her life. 

To save a girl who freed her from the woman who had breathed such life into her.

A cruel life.But life nonetheless.

Only fitting her death had been a cruel one.

And it was comforting, she remembers thinking, to know that in some stories those who played the role of the villain got what was coming to them.

Though if she had been thinking of Maman or herself.

She still could not say.

And somehow, then, it had become darker.

The pit growing.The vast expanding.  

Her body healing even as it screamed for nourishment.But slow and uncomfortable.  

She would whither and die before she would be healed enough to find nourishment if the blood didn’t find her first.

And, she had thought, this time, it most certainly wouldn’t.

It hadn’t taken long for her eyes to close.

Or for the smile to pull at her lips.

“ _It’s just…you were dead.And now you’re not,”_ Laura had said not long after her eyes had opened again.The taste of blood coating her lips.“ _And I_ _know that you’re probably going through a lot with your mom it’s just—-.”_

She had watched as Laura’s breath catch in her throat.The gentle thud of her pulse quickening.And then she had kissed her.

And Laura had kissed her back.

Again and again.

Over and over until they were packing bags and fleeing; their hands held tight and together.

And she had thought nothing, no blood or morsel, had ever tasted to sweet.

 

//

 

There’s a shift somewhere nearby.

And Carmilla turns.

Mattie is asleep against a crate, her neck bent at an odd angle.  

An ache, no doubt, she’ll hear about it the morning.

And afternoon.

And probably evening too.

WillyBoy 2.0 is lying nearby.Examining the dirt beneath his fingernails like it’s the most fascinating thing on the planet.Not yet well versed in training his body to sleep on command.

The shift happens again.

Dull.  

Above them.

And Carmilla feels her breath catch.

Hesitant foot steps.  

Pacing.

Kneeling.

Laying down.

A held breath.

And then the gentle _thump, thump, thump_ of a heart beat.

And, Carmilla thinks, had she not done so already.She simply might cry.

The fool.  

The little, tiny fool.

And before she can stop herself, she stands.Walking the few steps to the door above them.Taking up her watch beneath it.  

Masochism.

A trait she had yet to out grow.

And it’s funny, of course.To find herself trapped beneath the surface once more.Her thoughts of only a girl and a gentle smile.

How poetic.How cyclical life most certainly was.

She can’t help but ghost her hand across her hip.The gentle raise of the skin suddenly hot in a way it hadn’t been in centuries.

“ _Did it hurt_.”

Laura had asked.Her cheek warm against the swell of Carmilla’s breast.

“ _No.”_

A lie.

Not a hard one to tell.  

It had hurt.Sharp.And jagged.

The knife had been anything but smooth.

Her breath had caught in her throat.  

And she had wished for it to be quick.Wished she could turn and run.  

Wished she had denied a stranger a dance.

“ _I don’t really think about it anymore.”_

To which she meant, she thought of it every night.

Semantics.

There’s a shift above her.A shiver.And she thinks that perhaps Laura has given up.And she’s returning to the warm of her bedroom.  

Maman’s.

Even in death, the woman haunted her.

But no.Of course not.Never so lucky.

She must grab the throw from the settee.Because she’s settling once more.And she can feel the warmth radiate from above her.

And death, Carmilla thinks, not for the first time in her life.

Death.

So fleeting and tiresome.So trivial to an immortal.

Death.

Above her there’s the a whimper and a cry.  

And the _thump, thump, thump_ grows stronger.

There were things in life much worse than death.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tumble with me: http://daisyfalls.tumblr.com/


End file.
